Kristol Killed the Magazine Star

We saw the other day that Google determined the dread Russians* spent less than $5000 in ads trying to influence the 2016 election.

In case you're wondering, Millennial readers (you poor bastards), the Dems never feared Russia when it was Soviet Union and had five thousand nuclear missiles pointed at United States. In fact party of Democrats actively encourage, rooted for, and supported Kremlin during Cold War. See for example the letter of America's own Senator Edward M Kennedy to Brezhnev asking him to take it easy on Ronald Reagan. On side note, easiest way for mad-man Reagan to kill communists would have been, and still is, nuclear strike on San Francisco, UC Berkley, The New York Times...*

Anyway the 4700 or so rubles the Soviets, I mean Russians, spent on Election 2016 is less then we've spent to advertise some of our books, both successfully and unsuccessfully.

We don't need to advertise anymore. Through the magic of the internet when we publish a book the damn thing sells itself.

Selling books is easy. We've been talking about it here for a bit now, as alert reader(s) may have noticed: write what the audience wants. You people want more World War 1990, you get more World War 1990.

Which brings us to the now defunct Weekly Standard. William Kristol's magazine started as a policy and idea journal, the banner of Newt Gingrich's 104th Congress. I was a charter subscriber. Now The Standard is a Never Trump embarrassment with a shrinking subscriber base who's lost its sugar daddy. You see, these political magazines never make money and need a rich guy who doesn't mind losing a couple of million a year as a write-off.**

Someone will make excuses for The Standard- well in this day and age....digital media...since the Great Recession...Bullshit.

Write what readers what to read. Civil War Quarterly asked us tow write a piece about Sherman's March, to which we replied, 'Hasn't that already been done?' Maybe so, but voila! All of the military history magazines have expanded since the Great Recession. When one writes what readers want to read one can do that.

*We say nuke them from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

**We don't even know what a write-off is, but they do, and they're the ones writing it off.